Every club wanted him. This time, he interviewed the prospective candidates, they did not interview him. He decided upon Carlton. It was a choice, he admitted, that was partially governed by the assumption of the Blues’ greater ease at being able to meet his old club’s demands.
His next best shortlisted club, Collingwood, would not have been able to sort things as comfortably, he figured. Carlton ultimately satisfied West Coast with a clutch of draft picks and a talented player. But it need not have been this way. Indeed, next year it might not be this way.
Had a submission that is before the AFL and being thrashed out in a working party been in place this year, Judd would have been free to leave West Coast and go wherever he wanted — for nothing.
The AFL agreed when it signed the most recent collective bargaining agreement that it would review the restrictions on player movement, and it established a working party to do so. The AFL Players Association has completed a detailed recommendation of changes it wants adopted for next year.
Chief among the proposed changes is restricted free-agency, whereby a player would have the right to move clubs after six years without the need for compensation to their originating club. Prior to the six years, players could be allowed to move for free if they came out of contract and their club failed to offer a new deal. If a second club offered a contract, the original club would have to match it. If they did, the player would have to stay; if not, he could move for free.
The opposition to the change is obvious: how could you justify losing Chris Judd or Jonathan Brown for nothing?
Matt Finnis, the AFLPA football operations manager, offers this argument: "The West Coast Eagles were rewarded for finishing 14th and being able to pick up Chris Judd in the draft for nothing and getting six years service from him. He won a Brownlow Medal, he captained the club to a premiership and he played nearly 22 games a year for six years. Is someone going to seriously say he owes the West Coast Eagles some form of compensation?
"Under our proposal, a club would have the ability to keep Chris Judd, provided they want him, up until the current time (six years) so there would have been no time before now under our system that Chris Judd could have left West Coast Eagles to a club of his choice if they wanted to keep him.
"If he does choose to leave, the club receives a signifi cant amount of money in their salary cap to be able to recruit another player. And if we are serious as a competition about competitive balance and the bottom teams being able to improve quickly, don’t we want Carlton to be able to get Chris Judd and hang on to the No. 3 pick and hang on to Josh Kennedy? Because that is going to make it easier for them to improve."
The diffi culty with this is that it is not necessarily the bottom team that gets the bounce from poaching a Judd. In circumstances of unfettered choice, he could easily have chosen fourth-placed, wealthy Collingwood or the premier, Geelong.
"You still have a salary cap so it is not about being loaded towards wealthy clubs because all clubs have the same limit," AFLPA chief executive Brendan Gale said. "We are not proposing scrapping the salary cap. No one club could go out and buy (Luke) Hodge, Judd and (Luke) Ball if they all came out of contract because they still have to fi t them in the cap.
"People are scared of losing a player but, equally, look at Carlton: are they not excited about getting a player? We are not proposing it to be like rugby league with players moving midseason."
From a club perspective it is a glass-half-full approach: do you fear being raided of your best talent or bullish of your ability to lure a player? For every player leaving a club there is another club welcoming a recruit.
Australia’s indigenous game has long prided itself on its unique characteristics. Player movement is an area that further defines it. No other major sporting code in the world operates under dual systems that cap earnings and distribute talent through a draft. None has a salary cap and tight restriction on player movement.
"Competitive balance has been great for the game, we support competitive balance and we would never seek any changes to the system that we thought would undermine that or bring down the house of cards, and we are convinced what we are putting forward would not do that," Gale said. "I think at the moment the clubs hold all the cards."
Under the proposal, trade week — although distasteful to the players' union and the AFL alike — would remain. A starting point in negotiations would be a minor shift to allow out-of-contract players to join the national draft and not just the pre-season draft. Currently, they require the goodwill of their club to delist them in time for the national draft.
Despite the fear and loathing of free agency being about the unrewarded loss of a marquee player, the incentive for change is as much about freeing up movement of players at the bottom end of the scale. Until yesterday, when 18 trades were completed, in recent years, there had been a trend downwards in the number of trades each season, which were normally propped up by one or two major trades.
Player manager Tom Petroro of Stride management noted that although the comparatively large number of trades this year suggested fluidity had returned to player movement, this overlooks the number of players who wanted to be traded but were not. "After this week, you would probably say there was less of a need for free agency, but how many players wanted to move clubs and could not?" Petroro asked.
Some at club level, who preferred not to be named, favour introducing a second trade period after the draft and the capacity to trade into future drafts as compromised developments that would help increase player movement without taking the bold step of introducing free agency.
This year, the AFL introduced a change that meant clubs could trade players without having to use the pick. That allowed Geelong to shift Steven King and Charlie Gardiner without having to haggle for a pick early enough in the draft to be useful, yet late enough to get the deal done. Thus King and Gardiner were bundled together to St Kilda for the redundant pick No. 90. Fortunately for King and Gardiner, they could rely on the goodwill of Geelong to help them get to where they wanted to go. Would this have happened, though, if the Cats were preoccupied with another trade?
Despite his history of having run the players' union before becoming league chief, Andrew Demetriou remains stridently opposed to the notion of free agency, yet he admits to a desire to improve player movement. Traditionally, change of this type has come about only through litigation or the threat of it. Gale acknowledges this and hopes it will not come to that, but fears it might.
"That is where the problem is going to come (a low priority player). One of those players is going to say, 'I am being unfairly restrained and I am going to take on the system'," Gale said.
"We support the salary cap, we support the draft, we are not convinced by the rules that govern internal movement. If we don't take advantage of an opportunity to explore this issue, which we won in the CBA, I am worried that an individual caught up in this situation who feels he is being deprived unfairly will take the system on.
"I would think next year there would be change in place. We had concrete terms of reference, time lines, a working party and we have a very detailed submission and they have said to us they will investigate fully.
"Is the threat (of litigation) a real threat? I don't think it is a real threat at this stage. But I know inquiries have been made (by players about litigation) and things have been suggested, but when push comes to shove, I think the industry works fairly collaboratively. So on that basis, I'm pretty confident some constructive change can be made without litigation. It's not going to bring down the house of cards."
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